One or more aspects relate to visual interfaces. In particular, one or more aspects relate to improving the usability of a visual interface.
One or more aspects operate in the general environment of screen readers and applications with visual interfaces, such as a visual integrated development environment (visual IDE).
Users of screen readers typically have three ways of moving around a screen, the arrow keys, the tab key or special keystrokes which are either built into the screen reader or the application itself. It is a common experience for a screen reader user not to reach a part of an application screen comprising a visual control and also not to be able to activate a visual control in part of an application screen that a user can access. So users with no vision may not even know there are unreachable screen parts because a screen cursor cannot always reach or see every screen part. The net result is that screen reader users have limited access to applications and should not assume that they will be able to access every visual control on a new application.
An example application that uses visual controls that are not normally accessible to a screen reader is a visual IDE. Visually impaired users are unable to navigate a visual development canvas, and thus cannot readily access or generate visual controls (for example message flow controls). A solution is required to enable visually impaired users to access these visual controls and other graphical user interface (GUI) elements in order to create and modify applications (for example message flow applications).